


if by you, you mean we

by falooda



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Canon Compliant (for the most part), Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Spoilers for Crimson Flower Route, Spoilers for Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), character injury but i swear it's not major, elaboration on the lincas paired ending, established and loving relationship, tenderness parfait and there are hugs also
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:41:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23533222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falooda/pseuds/falooda
Summary: “We’ll travel all the way up north,” Caspar says, sprawled next to Linhardt just outside the gazebo in the monastery grounds, mapping their trail of adventure in the air. “We’ll cross the mountains and the rivers and wander into Leicester, won’t it be fun? We can visit Lysithea, now that we know she’s recovering so well, and we’ll get to see Ignatz and Marianne again, and Hilda, and—hey, Lin, what do you think?”Linhardt hums, genuinely giving thought to the best course of their journey. Until a few years ago, the quickest, most strategic route would have materialised in the mind’s map, but now Linhardt intentionally lets the thought drift away, instead choosing to let his finger wander next to Caspar’s.
Relationships: Caspar von Bergliez/Linhardt von Hevring
Comments: 7
Kudos: 43





	if by you, you mean we

**Author's Note:**

> while this story is mostly canon compliant, i did make some changes (because I Felt Like It, okay?) as you'll see! i hope it isn't too jarring to read (':

_There’s a line that goes all the way from my childhood to you - empire line by the national_

It starts with the clatter of a warning thunderstorm outside. It always begins like this, Linhardt notes, purely observant even in his dreams. The stars will come out eventually, once they cross the bridge. He casts around a cursory glance, knowing what he’ll see. The Professor and Ferdinand and Felix, knee-deep in maps and war strategies; Annette and Bernadetta in the corner, stealing furtive glances around them as they talk in low voices; Hubert in the left corner, out of sight and out of mind. Linhardt makes eye-contact with him and Hubert, cold and all-seeing, is good at turning into liquid shadow. Linhardt looks away first.

Caspar is bright as light and twice as thunderous… except for at the moment. 

Linhardt has lived this moment hundreds of times, walking through this scene slowly, reliving it every single time. In reality, he has lived this only once, and for that, he’s truly grateful to the saints, to Sothis herself. 

This is a dream but Caspar is dying. 

Caspar is dying, in his arms, in this dream.

In reality, Linhardt had not been so aware of his surroundings; he’d been too busy stemming the flow of poison from the arrow Caspar had taken to his side. In reality, everyone had been miserable.

In all that Linhardt compartmentalised his feelings, separates his heart from his head, he recognises this as something from the one and only Mittelfrank production he had attended—this soul-sickness, this metaphorical wounding. This pain that is not truly his, not when Caspar is unconscious, blood warm and turning cold. That had been in aria, straight from Dorothea’s heart.

In reality, Caspar had been just fine. If Linhardt was to wake up this very second, he'd find Caspar alive and warm and snoring extremely loudly right next to his ear. In this dream, Linhardt can't seem to wash the blood off his hands.

It always ends when they decide to cross the bridge; no such bridge exists on paper maps, Linhardt has searched for one just like this for months. This bridge lies, if he recalls correctly, close to home, up in the traitorous mountain gravel of Remire. And they cross it just before dawn breaks, to Lysithea, to Dorothea, to other healers who can stand to not pass out at the mere sight of blood. Linhardt tries to be an asset to the Black Eagle Strike Force, but some sins cannot be forgiven.

The clock ticks away the minutes, loud and apprehensive, to when Edelgard orders them to move out one by one, silently, slowly. Ferdinand holds a still Caspar on horseback, gentle and firm, and soon, Linhardt knows the moment like he knows the breath in his lungs, Caspar's eyelashes will flutter open with early morning sunlight pressing itself into his eyelids. He only knows this detail because he was watching, back then. 

But then again, Linhardt is always watching.

Caspar is brash and blunt, invulnerable to empty words, Linhardt knows. He is, however, not immune to arrows. Just the way Linhardt isn’t immune to the sight of blood.

He recaps, in this dream, how Caspar had opened his eyes, dazed and unfocused, and reached out towards Linhardt. And with knuckles covered in flecks of dried blood, Linhardt had met him halfway.

Much later, in the sweetness of a safe haven in the midst of raging war and thunderstorms:

“Lin,” Caspar had whispered words full of urgency, “ _Lin_ , listen to me, I’m not afraid—”

“But _I_ am,” Linhardt had snapped, tension drawing his shoulders in and away from Caspar.

“I’m not afraid for me,” Caspar had ploughed on relentlessly, “I’m not afraid of dying. But _you_ —”

“Shut up,” Linhardt whispered back fiercely, life depending on it, “Shut up, Caspar von Bergliez, you will _not_ die.”

And Caspar flinches away at the tone, at his full name, quieting down. Linhardt is usually composed, and to see him lose his cool over something Caspar's directly responsible for, unsettles him. He doesn’t sleep that night, too stricken with Caspar’s injury, and more so by his words. 

They’ll cross the bridge. The sun will rise, orange light spilling its sudden truth over the lands. Linhardt wakes to Caspar's nose buried in his hair, arms wrapped around Linhardt, a vice-like promise of some persuasion.

In the current timeline of events: The Black Eagle Strike Force had long since disbanded. Linhardt often sent letters home, however, at Caspar's insistence, to the Imperial Household, where no doubt Hubert was doing his best not to glower as the Emperor read their letters out in the gardens, sipping jasmine and honey. They hardly ever received letters, never spending too long in one place. Caspar had wanted to travel, and traveling they were, watching the skies change from sunny blue to a steel grey.

🍃

In the land formerly called the Holy Kingdom, there had been few places for casual visit. Faerghus birthed knights and mages, and pilgrims journeyed from across Fodlan, to schools of magic to learn and best their rivals and hone their skills. While visiting for no other reason than to take a break from the tense political atmosphere of the Alliance or the sunny tropical skies of Adrestia wasn’t unheard of, there was little reason to visit in the cold and biting Faerghian winter.

Caspar relishes the bitter cold. Linhardt handles it with spite.

“ _Liiiiiiin_ , wake up!” Linhardt pretends not to listen.

“It’s already bright out, let’s go!” Caspar says, voice ringing very, very close to Linhardt’s ear. He pretends it doesn’t bother him.

“Hold on, let me astral project, then.” Answering was, in hindsight, the worst response one could hand a determined Caspar. Linhardt didn’t have to open his eyes to see the smile unfurl across Caspar’s face and the thought alone made Linhardt purse his lips, just in case he gave it all away. 

Outside, minstrels sing to praise the saints and birds join the choir. Caspar hums the song through his smile, Adrestian words not quite matching the ones sung in the streets of Faerghus but they’re enough to make Linhardt give in. Caspar—wide-awake and blurry around the edges, from what Linhardt is trying so hard not to see from between lashes and the inescapable urge to fall back asleep—climbs back into bed, close as he can to Linhardt.

And blows a raspberry on his forehead.

“Disgusting,” Linhardt says, sitting up reluctantly, and the only disgusting thing about this entire exchange was that he was, perhaps, not disgusted by it at all.

Cackling madly, Caspar bounds down the stairs of the little inn they’re staying at. The owner is not overly fond of them, eyeing Caspar suspiciously as he chats with the cook, ever-raising eyebrows at the high-brow, rough-around-the-edges Adrestian dialect. The period after the war had been turbulent but people of the former capital of the Holy Kingdom retained their quiet suspicion of those not intrinsically theirs. 

The cold is, sometimes, intangible.

They make their way to the stables, bread and water stuffed into pouches tied around their belts. The groomsmen nod at Caspar in acknowledgement; and at Linhardt, in some brand of politeness the people of the north arm themselves with.

🍃

“We’ll travel all the way up north,” Caspar says, sprawled next to Linhardt just outside the gazebo in the monastery grounds, mapping their trail of adventure in the air. “We’ll cross the mountains and the rivers and wander into Leicester, won’t it be fun? We can visit Lysithea, now that we know she’s recovering so well, and we’ll get to see Ignatz and Marianne again, and Hilda, and—hey, Lin, what do you think?”

Linhardt hums, genuinely giving thought to the best course of their journey. Until a few years ago, the quickest, most strategic route would have materialised in the mind’s map, but now Linhardt intentionally lets the thought drift away, instead choosing to let his finger wander next to Caspar’s. 

This patchwork assemblage of their childhood dreams—Caspar in shining armour, riding across the lands, and Linhardt, laying down in the distant grasses waiting for Caspar to tire himself out—had fabricated its beginnings under silver fir and hornbeam and ficus, in the sprawling gardens of the monastery. 

“We can go further north, all the way to Fraldarius, even.”

“Yeah! Wait, don’t you think it’ll be weird to visit when Felix isn’t around?”

“Felix turned into a fuddy-duddy swashbuckling professor, don’t you think our days attending seminars are over? We can always appreciate the cold, cold hinterlands without the very personification of breathing down our necks.”

Linhardt doesn’t mean that, not truly, not after all the tens of thousands of times he’s patched Felix up. Besides, Linhardt just doesn’t have the sort of countenance to hold a grudge with such gravity. It is, as Hilda would say, just a tad exasperated, too much work.

“We could go all the way up to Gautier,” Linhardt continues, “and then..”

“We could go to Sreng!” Caspar says, catching Linhardt’s fingers in mid-air. He continues to chatter about the possibilities and benefits of travelling north and Linhardt notes in wonder how Caspar’s hands have always had a mind of their own, twisting around his own fingers to slot them better. It is not, however, a new observation. Linhardt has had enough time and patience to study Caspar in his entirety, charmingly more than the sum of his parts; whether it’s when he holds the sword too close to the hilt until his knuckles turn white or when he tangles the reins on the warhorse around his fingers or reaching for the cat in apprehension, to cop a quick pet before it dashed away to safety, Caspar’s hands have always been outstretched, reaching. Force of habit or not, Linhardt has always found himself reaching back.

“—and you can even study, like the old snore you are!” Caspar ends his monologue, turning over to look at Linhardt under the dying red sun. Linhardt raises an eyebrow, deciding this wasn’t the battle he was going to indulge Caspar with.

“Study what?”

“Anything. Everything.”

And he can’t find fault with that.

🍃

On the last day of the Blue Sea Moon, Caspar insists on tying together a bundle of Linhardt’s books to take along with them on their journey.

On the third day of their travels, the books go missing in the wee hours of the morning. The rain flushing down the sides of the windowpanes and the leaks in the high-ceilinged roofs, seemed to mourn more for the downturns of Caspar's mouth than at the seemingly misplaced amusement in Linhardt’s teasing.

🍃

Many moons later, the first snow arrives just when they’ve found themselves an inn to rest at for the night. At Caspar’s behest they go out into the streets, past the marketplace and towards the woods. The trees, having lost their lively colour, stand like ghostly sentries by the paths that wind away from the village.

Linhardt breathes in the fog, trying to keep his mind off the white burning that curls like smoke in his lungs and pretends, instead, to examine the starfall, and something reminiscent of equal parts folklore and rumour about the Goddess comes to mind. He narrates as much to Caspar as they walk leisurely, matted furs tickling the neckline, blowing out snakelike curls of fog and dew into the shadows.

They make their way back into town, hanging up their cloaks and leaving their boots to dry and they climb into bed, Linhardt enjoying the casual warmth that comes with companionship and the fact that said company always keeps warm—in more ways than one. The lone candle on the dresser is blown out and Linhardt, inches and smiles away from when he had once thought it impossible to feel warm again, falls asleep.

🍃

Count Bergliez had not been so insistent on sending his children to the church, as Count Hevring loved to point out in distaste every so often. This had resulted in spending countless hours out in the churchyard, trying to pacify Caspar’s restlessness with Linhardt’s own curiosity. _The Saints_ , Linhardt will reason with his father later, _will not care_. Saint Cethleann wouldn’t mind, he will say, watching his father’s brow crease ever so slightly as he goes scott-free.

“It’s not a bad thing,” Caspar’s brother laughs, honest and still boyish, dangling Caspar by the legs when they find him and Linhardt fallen asleep quietly under the yew.

The Saints do care, as Linhardt finds out later, one early morning in the chapel, with Flayn decorating the altar with tiny white flowers bloomed with care and magic.

Saint Cethleann, he thinks, did not mind as long as they remembered.

🍃

They decide to skirt Derdriu, if only to spare themselves the memories and the few Alliance cavalries that flocked the area. The Alliance lived up to its name better now, with all remaining House leaders in more or less agreement.

Hilda had travelled with them part of the way, all the way to the borderlands separating Leicester and Faerghus, until a letter came to her from her brother, stating that the good Lord Goneril wanted her home in a week’s time. Never had they seen Hilda so mournful as she said her goodbyes, leaving them with pink-beaded jewelry to remember her by.

Some towns were crowded and bustling, with breadsmith and blacksmith sharing the same row of shops and these were the towns Caspar liked best. Those that were deserted—whether in fear of bandit groups or the allure of bigger towns nearby, offering opportunities to families that had suffered in the war—were Linhardt’s favourites, silent ghost towns with little to disturb them as they ambled around, eating chilling mist and watery soup for dinner. And where, he thinks, trouble will not find them, at least for the night.

Most often, they would go wherever curiosity took Linhardt. He found it quite funny that they were at the mercy of the winds, like blades of grass bending towards some distant horizon. He’d write everything down, record every city and village they stepped foot in, journal about the various unknowables and the gospel truths, much to Caspar’s amusement.

🍃

Caspar burrows into the bed, squished against Linhardt.

Often, this is a common occurrence. At three-thirty in the morning, it was not. And then—

The crack! of thunder threatens to split apart the sky.  
Caspar whimpers. 

The wind laments.

Linhardt has never been one for singing but he loops his arms around Caspar, retired War Master and currently white-knuckled in some brand of remembrance of the horrors past. The rain brings it out, the soft downturns of his mouth as Linhardt tries to find words to old hymns they were taught by the tutor at the Imperial Palace.

Linhardt doesn't use his magic often these days. There is no reason to practice it either. But he brings it out on occasion when Caspar tries to be and fails. They have given up much after the war and even more has been stripped from them but he does it reassure them their smiles stay intact, relieved and whole.

🍃

Here are the things Linhardt knows without quite knowing how he came by them, in an uncharacteristic show of unscholarliness. He made a list of the small hierarchy of insignificant things he misses:

  * Tea time at the monastery. He mentions it in passing in a letter from eastern Arianrhod in a letter to Edelgard. Three weeks later, he finds a messenger with a bag of loose Angelica tea waiting for him by the city gates of Rome. He takes comfort in knowing that the Emperor's shade will always keep an eye on them, no matter where they are.
  * Birches at the von Hevring estate. It doesn't bother him as much, however, birches grew even in Fraldarius, even in Ordelia, even in Bergliez. In fact, he has seen enough birches to last several lifetimes. He misses them, still. 
  * Orioles at the monastery that liked to settle in Byleth’s hair when they napped in the late afternoon sunshine on the rare days off they didn’t conduct seminars. 



There is much work to be done to compose lists, even entire novels on the things he does not miss, like the origami of simple joy that unfolds across Caspar’s face at the first sign of a fight and the snatched naps between bailing him out of trouble. There are always days for endless leisure and there are days when the sea of adventure crashes over them again and again, whispering over the breaking waves, the promise of new beginnings.

**Author's Note:**

> the trials and tribulations of trying not to blab in the author's notes but here goes:
> 
> \- the title is from amy woodward's poem by the same name  
> \- hilda's here! i now she's off-limits if you choose to go down the crimson flower route but i'm very attached to her  
> \- felix the professor is married and madly in love with annette, also a professor at the monastery  
> \- i know far too much about yews and birches and orioles because of this fic. please don't hesitate to correct any facts you think are incorrect (but do it politely? please?)  
> \- if the route linhardt and caspar take is a little confusing to follow, it's because it's intentionally left ambiguous because (Dramatic Voice) legend has it that they travelled all over fodlan.  
> \- how did lin and cas become friends i need to know exactly how intsys give me the forbidden knowledge please


End file.
